Touch and Tap

Aug 29, 2008

Listening in forums about the iPhone, many claim that they prefer other ‘touchscreen’ phones such as LG’s or Samsung’s, etc, whereby all but one fail to consider or realise the difference in their touchscreen technology.

iPhone and the iPod Touch uses a capacitance-based system, where it is “skin-activated” rather than pressure activated. As such, just tapping with your fingertips would produce a result. On the other hand, most other touchscreen phones employ a pressure-based touchscreen system, where a precise and pressured point is required to register an input. Moreover, most pressure-based touchscreens are confused when the size of the pressure point increases. Thus, the usage of fingers rather than fingernails on such touchscreens result in poor recognition. A stylus is therefore usually provided.

This tiny but distinct difference is huge enough to affect usability experience to the extent that it makes or breaks “typing” on the on-screen virtual full-sized keyboard. This also explains why critics of the iPhone claim that it is impossible to type on the iPhone virtual full-sized keyboard as they fail to realise the subtle difference in technology employed.

In my opinion, the capacitance-based touchscreen system is worth more than enough to compensate the apparent “software fixable” cons such as the lack of MMS, cut and paste, email attachment support.

The only problem thus far is the built-in battery with a three-digit replacement figure.